Though it has received mediocre reactions for its playability, The Callisto Protocol has been hailed as one of the most aesthetically impressive games of this age. Despite its excellent visuals, the game has failed to meet sales projections.
A report from MK-Odyssey (via VGC) claims that the development of The Callisto Protocol incurred 200 million won ($162 million), a really triple-A expenditure that the project has not been capable of recovering. The project team alluded to the title as “quadruple-A” since it was so expensive to create. In light of the game’s status as a first title in a subgenre, the budget is all the more impressive.
Krafton Prices Are Going Down
Samsung Securities claims that shareholders in Krafton have had to “reduce their objective stock values” because sales of The Callisto Protocol fell short of expectations. Although Korean video game company Krafton predicted that The Callisto Protocol would sell five million units, it has only sold around two million so far. Current market conditions have the stockbroker believing it will be difficult to achieve that objective.
Poorer-than-expected revenues have led to the decline in Krafton’s worth. The game received a variety of reviews, which the translated article attributes to its single-player concentration and very short run time. So that you can get an idea of how ambitious that goal is, consider that another survival horror game, Resident Evil Village, sold six million copies within half a year. Capcom’s series is well-known and received positive reviews upon release, but the five-million unit goal set for Striking Distance: Callisto was ambitious, to say the least.
The Callisto Protocol, which was released for Xbox One, PlayStation 4, Xbox Series X/S, PlayStation 5, as well as Windows on December 2, 2022, has a Metacritic rating in the upper 60s. Features Writer Andrew King gave the title a 2.5/5, saying that although the gameplay was engaging and the plot was forgettable, the “best-in-class lighting techniques” and the main characters were standouts.
Triple-A Games Are Supposed To Be Expensive
Triple-A games have an ever-increasing price tag. The rationale for this was recently detailed in a Game Developer article. The Callisto Protocol’s reported budget of $162 million is impressive for a debut publisher and product, yet previous titles have spent more. To provide just one example, the development of Cyberpunk 2077 by CD Projekt Red incurred a cost of $174 million.
As per entertainment industry expert Liam Deane of Omdia, spending $150 million or more on a title’s production is now “unexceptional” for triple-A titles. He explained the rising expenses by pointing to the higher rendering power demanded by modern systems and the greater amount of human work necessary to develop larger and more realistic game environments that can take advantage of these advancements.
As a result of these rising expenses, both publishers and developers are taking on a greater degree of risk whenever they invest in the creation of a new game. Ubisoft’s recent announcement of cost-cutting initiatives, which included the cancellation of three previously unannounced projects and other strategic adjustments, is an example of this impact in the news. The Callisto Protocol demonstrates that creating video games is a huge business with serious consequences.
